The Gate of fire ooe-2

by Thomas Harlan

  Thyatis ducked inside, sliding to the left into the shadow of the wall. Then she waited, letting her eyes lose focus, feeling the currents of the air on her face, letting the sense of the place settle on her. It still seemed abandoned. The side of the main house rose up before her, a two-story affair with a canted, tiled roof. Rows of dark windows on the second floor stared down at her. There were no lights. The moon was enough, though, and she made a clicking sound with her mouth. The spearman entered and moved to the right, allowing the archer to take up a position in the gate.

  Chopping her hand down to the left, she motioned the spearman to lead off. Her intent was to enter the house from the rear, where the kitchens should be. The spearman darted out across the space between the garden wall and the house. Thyatis remained watchful, but there was still no sign of movement or alarm. Then she followed and the archer after her.

  – |"Nothing, not so much as a mouse." Nikos sounded disgusted. Thyatis ignored him for the moment, stooping to look under the table of planks that stood against one wall of a room near the front of the villa. She held a collapsible metal lantern in one hand. The Illyrian was kitted out in a mail lorica with studded leather forearm braces. The shirt of iron rings fell to his midthigh and was covered with a linen tabard. Beneath that he wore a felt undershirt and a cotton tunic close to his flesh. Unlike Thyatis, who was going bare-headed, he was wearing an old-style Legion helmet with a smooth crown and metal flaps and nose guard that tied under his chin, protecting his cheeks. He had considered a cavalry helmet with a full face mask, but that would have cost him too much peripheral vision. After his last encounter with the homunculus he was taking as few chances as possible.

  Of course, after watching the creature eviscerate a dozen praetorians in their last match, the only sensible option would be to avoid any further test of strength at all. He had given up his gladius, too, for a long iron-bladed spear with a crossbar welded at the base of the head. The image of the homunculus dragging itself up that poor soldier's spear had stayed with Nikos. He did not fancy the same fate.

  Thyatis wiped a finger across the table and it came away dusty. It was obvious that the room had been used for storage recently, there were empty shelves made of raw new pine and some empty wooden crates in the corner. Bits of spilled food lay under the table and there was a relatively fresh wine stain on one corner of the table. Anything that might have been stored here, however, or anyone who had been living in the villa was gone.

  "Was there anything in the stables?"

  Nikos shook his head in negation. "No. Signs of horses and fodder for them, but nothing recent. It seems that we are too late."

  Thyatis nodded absently. She reminded herself of the things that the girl, Krista, had told them about the Prince and his habits. By her count, if it could be trusted, there should have been almost a dozen people living in the villa; the Prince, his homunculus, the two risen dead, and the Walachs. From what she had seen of the ground floor, and heard of the other buildings, it seemed that they had decamped. All signs pointed to a hurried but thorough evacuation of the premises.

  "Search the grounds," she said, turning back to Nikos and the other men clustered in the doorway. "They brought many heavy crates and boxes with them, but the wagons are still here. They cannot have gone far."

  Nikos nodded and turned, but halted at the doorway, one hand on the wall. He looked back in question. Thyatis raised an eyebrow and smiled.

  "Search in teams of three, like we trained," she said, hitching up her sword-belt. "Check the road for tracks of a single wagon going out and any other lanes or tracks that leave these buildings. The archers are to keep a signal arrow nocked."

  Nikos nodded and went out.

  Thyatis looked around the room again, then bent to pick up her lantern. As she did so, the shadows shifted and she saw a crumpled piece of parchment behind the table. It was at the edge of her reach, but she snagged it with a fingertip. It was not dusty. The parchment crinkled as she unfolded it.

  Lord Prince, it said in simple letters, I have gone and taken the little cat. My desire for life exceeds my love for you. If the gods will, we will meet again in a safe place, Krista.

  Thyatis grunted. She had expected as much. The slave girl had told the truth, then. Thyatis folded the parchment into a tiny square and put it in her girdle before jogging out into the big echoing hallway that ran down the center of the house. Her nerves hissed with the blood-fire. The Prince would be close by.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The Gate of Sihon, Aelia Capitonlina

  The steep narrow trail ended in a gate set into the base of the city wall. The rampart rose up from the top of the cliff like an extension of the hill itself. Zoe was panting in effort by the time they reached the shadowy vestibule. She glared at the desert chieftain's back-he did not seem tired. Given that he was easily twice her age, Zoe did not think it fair at all. The gate was small, shorter than most men, which would force anyone to bend down to pass through it. The face of it was covered with riveted iron plates and a square tower blocked out the night sky above. Anyone attempting to force the iron door would pay grievously for the privilege.

  Mohammed moved into the shadows, bending down, and Zoe heard a rattle and click. The moon was well behind the bulk of the city now and it was very dark in the space before the gate. She shivered and pulled her cloak tight around her. From this vantage, she could look down upon the valley behind them. It was quite dark, save for a cluster of fires burning just a little way from where they had left the camels.

  "Follow," came Mohammed's voice and she turned. The gate was open and led into utter darkness. Air rolled slowly out, heavy and humid with the smell of rotted cabbage and urine and offal. Zoe gulped and pulled an edge of her cloak over her mouth. The Quraysh had already vanished inside and she hurried to catch up with the sound of his boots on the flagstones. His voice drifted back to her. "Do not speak. There may be guards."

  The passage sloped upwards for a time, then rose sharply on a flight of broad steps, worn by the passage of many feet. The curved depressions on the stairs made it hard to keep one's feet, but Zoe staggered along in darkness for a time. Part of the passage was half-buried in debris. They rose out of the funk that had collected in the midden and her mind seemed to wake from a dream.

  When it did, she felt the ache in her thighs and buttocks flare up into serious pain. She gasped aloud in alarm and stopped, leaning against the wall. The surface was mossy and slippery.

  "Wait," she called. There was no answer. The sound of footsteps receded in the murk.

  Zoe cursed, but with the lifting of the haze in her mind, she thought to calm her thought and call upon the powers that coursed in her blood. Two deep breaths settled her thought and allowed the first entrance. With it came the flowering of perception and the darkness fell away like a dropped veil. The walls stood out in sharp relief. Now she could see that under the patina of moss and age there were paintings and mosaics inset into the walls. The rounded steps had once been sharp-cut marble and a series of delicate arches crowned the hallway. She hissed in surprise, but saw too that the figure of the desert chieftain had almost disappeared up ahead.

  Muttering, she jogged up the stairs. Her legs complained bitterly. They wanted a nice bed and a bath, not more climbing.

  – |At the top of the stairway, there was another door, which now stood open, and a vaulted chamber beyond. She stepped through the archway and found herself standing on a broad open plaza, a thousand yards wide. The moon was low in the sky, but its light glittered back from limestone paving and lines of ornamental trees. Off to her left, to the south, a monumental statue rose up from the plaza, one arm raised to the heavens. Even cast in shadow, she could see that it was the form of an emperor.

  She spat on the ground.

  At the center of the plaza, where arcs of trees converged, a massive temple rose up on a stepped platform. It was open on three sides, with bulky columns rising like tree trunks. Its ridgeline was crowded
with statues and votive sculptures. Within, half obscured by the colonnade, she could make out a sanctuary and something unexpected.

  Unlike the usual run of Roman temples, there was a humped shape underneath the shadowed roof, taking the place of the usual walled sanctuary. Too, the back wall was not a solid surface, but it too was columns.

  Halfway between the stairway house and the temple, she could see Mohammed, striding swiftly along the line of one of the curving roads. Ignoring the pain in her legs, she hurried after. Within moments, he had vanished up the steps.

  – |Zoe passed between the pillars, her shadow falling on richly layered paint. Her boots clicked on the marble tiling. It had grown cold as the night passed, and here, in this exposed place, a ghost of breath puffed from her lips. She came out into the open space around the strange humped structure at the back of the temple.

  A slab of rock, dark and pitted, thrust up from the marble floor. Indeed, the edges of the flooring tile had been worked to fit against it. A low barricade of wooden railing ran around it, keeping onlookers away from the massive plinth. Looking upon it, all unexpected, Zoe realized that it was the crown of the hill below them. This temple, the great plaza, the city, had grown up around it, everything here was focused upon this stone. It was very old and dragged at the will. Some momentous weight gathered around it. Zoe felt the air, letting her mage-sight expand to take in the temple and the buildings that surrounded it.

  Everything in the temple complex, even the curve of the walkways and the ranks of planted trees, was oriented toward the stone. Each building, each statue, each arc weighed against it, binding it, trying to restrain the power that throbbed and radiated and spilled from the crevices and pits in that ancient, blackened surface.

  – |Mohammed stood at the northern end of the slab, his hand on a column that still towered above him, reaching into the inky darkness of the roof. Something about the line of his shoulders alarmed Zoe and she vaulted over the barricade. Atop the stone, climbing toward him, she heard a sound. It was a ragged moan and a bubbling gasp in one. She halted, hands on the rough surface of the rock, feeling something fill the air around her. A power was moving in the hidden world.

  A knocking sound startled the air. Under her hands, the stone quivered.

  Without thinking, she summoned a ward and a shield and then gasped aloud herself.

  The Quraysh lashed out with a fist, striking at the empty air. The man shouted, his voice ringing with defiance. In her other sight, Zoe could see darkness boiling from the smooth surface of the pillars and curling through the air around her. Heat flushed from the slab and from the marble tiles. The wavering thin blue orb of her ward buckled as the black clouds washed over her. Anger and fear and hatred in the tile and marble yielded up enormous strength to the cloud and Zoe fell to her knees, chanting a calming meditation.

  The tendrils curled around Mohammed's arms and limbs like grotesque vines digging into rock. Zoe saw him crushed down against the slab and saw the stone crack and flake under the impact. Darkness curdled at his feet, dragging at his legs. The tendrils thickened and grew a forest of thin black tongues tipped with a red glow. One tongue snapped through the air, lashing Mohammed's cheek. A burning red welt appeared and the Quraysh screamed again, this time in horrible pain.

  The black cloud eddied around the fringe of Zoe's sphere, flowing past toward the man struggling at the peak of the slab. The power brushed her aside and she fell to the marble floor, sending the wooden barricade clattering down. She gripped the tile with both hands, her back hunched, trying to leach power from the old flooring. It was barren and dry, long ago drained of the vitality of living rock. She wept, feeling the pitiful weakness of her ward.

  Mohammed grappled with the darkness, wrestling tentacles away from his body. Now they had grown as thick as tree trunks and they coiled close, crushing his ribcage. Even through the shimmer of her ward, Zoe could hear the grinding of bones breaking under the pressure. Fear boiled up in her, threatening to close her throat. It was hard to breathe. The black tide lapped up around her. In the inky depths, she could see visions and torments. Fires burned in the depths of the earth, where emaciated figures writhed in torment. With an enormous effort, she forced herself to stand. Her ward flexed pearlescent, straining against the lake of ink, and matched her movement. The power that chuckled and hissed inside her demanded release, but it was hot with anger and hate. It yearned to join with the spinning black lake that surrounded her.

  With a heave, Mohammed rose to his feet, though he still crouched on the tip of the slab. The initial fear had passed and his eyes cleared. Suddenly, as Zoe watched, he stopped struggling and fell back into the black embrace. The red-tipped tongues slid over his flesh, pressing at his eyelids and slithering into his mouth and nostrils. Zoe tried to cry out to him, but no sound came.

  The black tide rushed up, covering her ward and sight of the desert chieftain.

  In the ocean of night, Zoe saw visions unfold:

  Siege towers loomed over the wall of a city, spitting flame. Men ran in the streets, thin and starved, with mad eyes. The earth shook and a gate tower cracked lengthwise. Hundreds of tons of stone and brick cascaded down into the street. The gate itself toppled, falling to one side. Its exposed limestone face was already burning fiercely. Men in bronze helmets stormed through the breach, scattering the few defenders before them. Eagle-headed standards moved through the smoke at the heads of columns of grim-faced men.

  The Palmyrene girl blinked furiously, her hand out in front of her face. The phantasm dissolved, though she could still feel the heat of the burning buildings on her hands and face. Smoke curled in her nostrils.

  A glorious temple filled with fat-bellied pillars shuddered, its tiled roof rippling with flame. On broad white steps, hundreds of men were struggling. Most of them wore horse-tail helmets and iron armor. The others were bearded, clad in mismatched armor, fighting with a hopeless ferocity. Clouds of arrows filled the sky, raking the ranks of the defenders. Again, eagle-headed standards advanced and the men of the city fell under hobnailed boots. Lightning snaked through the sky, lighting black clouds of smoke and ash. At the heart of the temple, priests waged a furious defense, their backs to an inner building of stone. Scintillating wards crumpled under the rage that fell from the sky. Amid the iron-armored soldiers, thaumaturges strode forward, spiking fire from their hands.

  Zoe felt cold stone under her back and realized that she had fallen. Everything around her was black as pitch, yet filled with a sensation of writhing movement. She closed her eyes, feeling the pain and loss of her aunt's death swell in her chest. It was hard to breathe again.

  A man stood on a barren hill, a bloody knife in his hand, his face raised to a storm-tossed sky. Lightning rippled, fierce and azure, between the clouds. Beneath his feet, a dark stone dripped with blood. The body of a boy lay sprawled on the cracked and riven slab. The man screamed at the sky and the sky answered. That sound cracked like a whip, breaking stone and setting trees alight, driving the man to his feet. Tears smoked from his face. He wept, seeing the body of his son.

  The man had the face of Mohammed.

  Blue-white light stabbed through the murk and the enormous pressure against her battle ward suddenly slackened. A single point of incredibly bright white light blossomed in the darkness and the black tide rushed back. The tendrils and waving forest of tongues shuddered and slowly withdrew, though to Zoe they seemed to resist mightily. Mohammed was revealed, lying at the base of the column. The red-and-black vines that had wormed into every orifice of his body were shaking as if in a high breeze.

  The sky, enraged, rippled like a sea in full storm. Rain fell, lashing the man. Rivers of water ran, carrying away the blood and the tears in a slurry of mud. In the rain, in the stuttering flare of the lightning, the hand of the dead boy twitched.

  Something was standing over the fallen body of the Quraysh. Zoe turned away, blinded, with the streaked afterimage of something with coruscating wings bestride him and
rising colossally above the building. Blinded, she pressed her face against the cold tesserae of the floor. The world was silent and still, but she felt the tremble of the darkness in the air around her. The hidden world was in chaos, with mighty powers striving back and forth. Mohammed's left boot beat a sharp tattoo on the rooftop.

  Vision returned and Zoe stared down at her hands, seeing them outlined in a soft white glow. She looked up, and for an instant she saw the temple around her as it had stood on the day it had been completed. It was vast with a two-story central hall. Ranks of round-bellied pillars lined the sides of the great open space. The walls gleamed in pale white outline and domes arched toward the heavens. Hundreds of windows pierced the upper walls. She stood, reaching out her hand to the nearest column, which rose up perfect and whole toward the distant, vaulted ceiling.

  It faded, slowly growing fainter and fainter. The roof went first, replaced by winking stars, and then the soaring walls dissolved. In only moments the looming shape of the Roman temple returned. Zoe felt tears seep from her eyes and loss churned in her stomach. She looked out upon the city, seeing the white roofs and winding narrow streets for the first time. The white radiance was flowing away from her, touching the windowsills and vine arbors as it passed. Zoe held her breath, seeing the soft white light pass over the land, illuminating everything with the refulgence of day. Olive trees, stockyards, temples, hilltops, tents were all thrown in sharp relief and then shadow came along behind as night closed in.

  The light passed and darkness settled around Zoe like a comfortable cloak. The writhing ebon tendrils were gone as well, swallowed up in the blood-stained slab and into the body of the Quraysh, who lay still on the rooftop. Zoe ventured to move a foot and found that she could. Even the blindness had passed, leaving only sparkles at the edges of her vision. She felt lighter, as if a great oppressive weight had been taken from her shoulders. Kneeling, she touched the side of Mohammed's throat. There was a pulse, at first thready, but rapidly growing stronger. His skin was hot to her touch and she realized that she was very cold.